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Stereotypes, Sauce & Sassy Jewelry

Friday, January 7, 2011

I love grocery shopping, & I really love pasta. How serendipitous, then, that the pasta sauce coupons I won from Black Pearls & Bitch Boots they arrived on grocery day. Coupons in hand, I headed to my local store with my trust shopping list (written by my mom because I'm still 15 for the time being) & eventually made my way to the pasta sauce aisle, in all its tomatoey glory. I should mention that I only recently began to like tomatoes. Or pasta sauce.

ANYWAY. I once had a boss who looked a great deal like Paul Newman, but he didn't like being told this. I'm not sure why, though, because frankly, Paul Newman was a fairly attractive dude, even in his later years. Now, though, PNew is dead & all commemorated in illustrative form on salad dressing packets & tomato sauce jars.

This one caught my eye first. Paul looks normal, sure, or as normal as a smiley cartoon dead guy can look while staring out at you from a glass jar of sauce. Mostly, I was confused by the name of this particular Newman's Own product. Sockarooni? This sounds like something that a big, overenthusiastic, sweaty guy yells at his kids' soccer matches: "GO GET 'IM, TYLER! GOALLLL! SOCKKKKEROONI!" But apparently it's just "peppers, spices, & the whole shebang," or so say the folks at Newman's Own.

And then I noticed that some of the other sauces, while less amusingly named, feature Paul looking quite dapper in a variety of "ethnic" (is that racist?) hats. And actually, my question is this: Is that racist? Or xenophobic? Or awkward? Or any of those things? I've never met a joyful, pasta-eating Russian in an ushanka, nor a smiley, sauce-swilling Frenchman with a pencil mustache & a wine-colored beret. But that's just me. Admittedly, I probably don't know international pasta consumers as well as the folks at Newman's Own do.

But the most bizarre of all, I think, is also the least explicable. Because really, I get why Newman's Own thought the Russian Paul should be in a furry cap & Paul-the-Frenchman should be all, well, Frenchy-looking, even if it's mildly offensive. But what, pray tell, is the illustrative logic behind the labeling on their Tomato & Basil Bombolina sauce?

Are you unsure? Good, because I'm not sure, either. From what I can tell, those are the bejweled hands of an unidentified woman holding Paul Newman's disembodied head over a vegetable garden. I'm still not sure how this relates to tomatoes, basil, pasta, sauce, or any combination thereof. Are Italians famous for toting happy heads around in their well-manicured hands? Is this a mobster reference with a play on pasta sauce? Is there a "Godfather" joke in here someplace?

I'm going to leave you to ponder that. But I'm also going to leave you to ponder this baffling piece or "artwork" (I use that term loosely) spotted at my local Panera. Listen, I'm as Jewish as the next bagel-eating Jewish gal, but this necklace & earrings set is too much even for me.

...I have so many questions.

27 comments:

Mandy
said...

oh my god. seriously? i never noticed this. it's like when paul died, the creative directors decided to go batshit and have fun with their labels while still keeping his legend in tact.

"how can we photoshop paul today?"

"if we can't turn him into a racial stereotype, we'll just label it sockarooni and nobody will know. it's gonna be so fun!"

I laughed out loud. I have never noticed how ridiculous the cartoons are. I'm going to pay more attention in the future. Also when I read Sockarooni, for some reason my brain translated that to: Snookeroni as in pasta sauce for Snooki. Yeah. It's Friday.

hahahaha.... you know I think subconsciously I might have wondered about the pasta sauce pictures before, but nobody ever laid it down for me like you just did. I am confused and mildly disturbed to say the least ;)

I have seen those before -- it's not so much xenophobic or racist as culturally insensitive. Just like a white man to be like, LOOK HOW AMUSING! I'm wearing a stereotypical idea of one culture's garb! HAHA! And! This sauce! It comes FROM THAT COUNTRY. GET IT?! BUY IT!

Ha! Oh dear, well at least they're trying to be different in the artwork on pasta sauce labels... Must try and look on the positive side. Although it is rather insensitive. Does the sauce taste good though?

Kate, you've just tapped into my worst nightmare: that someday I'll become famous enough to have my face on a pasta jar label & after my death people will dress up my cartoon likeness with culturally insensitive head gear.

The "Vodka Sauce" cracks me up...I'm pretty sure Penne alla Vodka ISN'T RUSSIAN. And why have they given PNew creepy Hitler-esque mustaches for two of the sauces but not for Sockarooni?! THOROUGHLY CONFUSED.

I love Socakrooni!! Mmm. I wouldn't consider the labels xenophobic (the jars aren't afraid of other cultures) and not racist either, but definitely cheesey. I don't understand the Tomato Basil jar at all.

haha, as for the bagel art, it looks like the necklace may have been decorated with glitter at school, and then when she got home her mom took a picture and told her to pretend those bagel slices were earrings. Just an idea!

I read all of the comments because I thought, surely someone has explained the hands to Kate by now. But nope and I am surprised to see how few people have noticed the Paul Newman jars! I almost always by Paul Newman brand. 100% of the proceeds go to charity and Paul Newman was the most handsome man ever. Ok, the hands. It's bombolina sauce. Think, grandmother or aunt who is always pinching your cheeks. Those are her hands.